deviantART launches iPhone/iPod Touch Web App

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Launched in 2000, deviantART is an online artist community with over 7 million members. Anyone can sign up and upload (and potentially sell) whatever they deem as “Art”. Some of it is awesome. Some of it, er, isn’t. If you don’t mind filtering out a bit of poorly drawn anime and a few suggestively posed video game characters, it’s not hard to find some really impressive stuff; at least half of my system’s wallpapers are from deviantART.

They’ve just launched a web application for iPhone and iPod Touch users, aiming to pack the deviantART experience into a slightly tighter package. At launch, the app supports browsing, commenting, and “collecting” pieces (that is, adding them to your favorites list). Search support should be coming tomorrow, with features like forums and slideshows following soon thereafter. Once the iPhone 2.0 software hits, users can expect to be able to save images as wallpapers and quickly flick through pieces à la the iPhone’s built-in photo application.

While my experience with the app was pretty smooth, I twice came across a problem where, while I could scroll up and down through the page, I couldn’t actually click any element of the page’s layout. Refreshing the page didn’t help, but a quick reset of my iPod Touch put things back in working order.

Besides that snag, the application is well polished and feels just as I would expect of a lighter version of deviantART. It makes good use of functionality available in Mobile Safari, such as determining how many images it should display based off of the device’s current orientation, or using CSS animations to make the menus feel smooth and buttery.